Top Scots crime author Val McDermid reveals her football scout dad is still more famous in her home town

00:01, 7 Sep 2014

ByScotland Now

McDERMID has sold more than 11million books across the globe, but she says her achievements a relegated to the subs bench by her father who discovered Scotland legend Jim Baxter.

Share

Get weekly news by email

SNS Group

World renowned Crime Author Val McDermid

Val McDermid has long since made her name as a bestselling, award-winning crime writer.

She has sold more than 11million books, has been translated into 30 languages and is about to publish her 28th novel, The Skeleton Road, which is already being spoken of as a standout entry in an extraordinary career.

The 58-year-old Fifer has seen her work successfully adapted for TV, notably the series Wire In The Blood starring Robson Greene.

Success has allowed her to put something back into the community in which she was raised. Raith Rovers, whose Stark’s Park ground already has the McDermid Stand, are seeing their players run on to the pitch this season with her website, valmcdermid.com, emblazoned across their chests.

Sponsoring the shirts of the club where her late dad Jim was a scout has special significance for her. It also keeps her very much in her place as her literary achievements are relegated to the subs bench when compared to those of her dad in the streets of Kirkcaldy.

He discovered Scotland and Rangers legend Jim Baxter. The footballer, who was from Hill of Beath, Fife, played for Raith Rovers from 1957 to 1960 before joining the Ibrox club for a record transfer fee.

She said: “People know I am Jim McDermid’s lassie. I’m not being funny here. I was at a game a couple of weeks ago and I went to Valente’s fish and chip shop.

“I have been going there since I was a young lassie. I was chatting to young Ernie behind the counter and John comes round from the back of the shop and says to a girl in the queue, ‘You support Rangers, don’t you?’ She says yes and he points to me and says, ‘See that woman there? Her dad discovered Jim Baxter.’

“Forget being a bestselling crime writer. Fife is truly the land of ‘I kent your faither’.”

Jim Baxter and Billy Bremner in 1967

Her dad certainly earned his fame. Val sometimes accompanied him to games and in winter he would bring a plank of wood for them to stand on so they wouldn’t sink into the mud.

She said: “I saw some truly terrible football when I was wee. Miners and shipyard workers kicking seven bells out of each other on pitches made of asphalt. It wasn’t the most fabulous way to spend a Saturday or Sunday morning but I was with my dad so we had a blether and a laugh.”

If Raith Rovers are a link to her dad, The Skeleton Key connects her to another part of her past. Val left Kirkcaldy at 17 for Oxford to read English. She was one of their youngest undergraduates and the first from a Scottish state school.

It was there she met Dr Kathy Wilkes, who was caught up in the siege of Dubrovnik in 1991. The book, which centres on a cold case probe in which a skeleton discovered in Edinburgh links back to the Balkan Wars of the 90s, was partly inspired by her conversations with the late philosophy fellow.

It also has its roots in her conversations with Professor Sue Black, head of the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification at the University of Dundee, who investigated harrowing war crimes in Kosovo as part of the British Forensic Team.

Val said: “When I was at Oxford, I was very close friends with philosophy tutor Dr Kathy Wilkes. She was one of the people involved in the secret university movement behind the Iron Curtain and she later became involved with philosophy at the university in Dubrovnik. She was in the city teaching when the siege started so she was trapped there for its duration.

“Afterwards, she did extraordinary things, driving ambulances full of medical supplies across Europe and she raised a shedload of money to help restore Dubrovnik after the disastrous siege.

“She was decorated by the state, the city and was an honorary general in the Army – there’s a square named after her in Dubrovnik.

“She told me all these stories and it was always there in the back of my mind that this was the stuff of great fiction and I would have to use it.

“Sue Black obviously, for her experiences in Kosovo, also fed into it. I’ve talked to her over the years about her experience.”

SNS Group

Val is sponsoring Raith Rovers' home jersey for the 2014/2015 season

Val is aware that, by taking on the complicated, torturous past of the Balkans conflict, she is in the kind of territory which divides opinion.

She said: “There is always that thing that I am probably going to get a kicking for this one way or another but it was something I wanted to write about. And if there is something you want to write about, you just have to take a deep breath and dive into it.”

If the context is entirely different, the sentiment is similar when it comes to the Scottish referendum. Val has come out on the side of Yes, which has met a mixed response.

She said: “It’s as you would expect. A lot of people are very supportive, other people are slightly rude. But I have not had much direct hostility. I think, apart from a small lunatic fringe, the debate has been civil.

“I am just a Scottish person like everyone else. I have no greater weight to my opinion than anybody else. I haven’t said, ‘Listen to me, I’m right.’ People have asked me and I have answered.”

Val lived in Manchester and Northumberland for many years and, in fact, has lived in England longer than Scotland. But she returned to Edinburgh at the turn of the year. Not, she is quick to point out, for politics.

“It’s for complicated reasons, none of them to do with the referendum,” she said. “Coming back has been great. People are very welcoming. I appeared on Question Time and just after, I was in Glasgow, at traffic lights, and this guy winds his window down and says, ‘Hi! You were on Question Time the other night.’

“It’s Glasgow so you don’t know which way it’s going to go and I said, ‘Yeah…’ and he says, ‘You were brilliant.’

“You don’t get that in England. You don’t get people shouting across the road at you in the street.”

Or, come to that, in a chip shop after a football game.

• The Skeleton Road is published by Little, Brown on September 11, £18.99.